Bassassin

£600 for a pretty banged-up RS824 does make me curious about what I'd get for my near-pristine & fully original 924. Up until the recent BC chatter about these prompted me to dig it out, it had sat in its case untouched since we moved house, back in 2014. If it had stayed there, I might be considering flipping it - but it's been quite eye-opening to remember what a great bass this is. Tried recording it on a new composition where my go-to DiMarzio-equipped J just wasn't working, and remembered exactly why I used this bass to record an album back in 2010. Don't think it's going anywhere now! It does have the best passive P/J tone of any bass I've played, despite having no way of blending the pickups. As a result of a bit of pickup talk about these with @LukeFRC it turns out the J units on these are quite ridiculously hot - on mine the J measures 12.51k, against a measly 9.76k from the P. Probably explains why I've never got a tone I'm happy with from my other old MIJ P/J, a Washburn SB-40.

Someone posted this on p7 of the TB thread. Matches Brother Bubba's description perfectly, even down to the uncontoured slab body. Neck construction & trc shape tell me this is a mid/late 70s Korean cheapo. These 8-pole pickups turn up on some MIK basses, they're either licensed Maxons or copies - most likely licensed, based on the close links between the Japanese & Korean industries at the time. The main difference between these & the MIJ units is that they are very hot, typically 11-12k, as opposed to the 6 or 7 the branded Maxons read. So no, I don't think it's a wind-up, Bubba's just a bit, erm, confused and needy.

AliExpress tat. Nothing like as nicely done as the HB.

A lot of early 70s Precision & Jazz copies used these 8-pole Maxons - at the time they started being used (71-ish) there were no accurate P or J copy pickups being made, and they would have been hidden under chrome ashtray cover anyway. I've never seen a 70s P copy with a Tele headstock, and conversely I don't think I can remember any of the Tele bass types using the Maxon 8-pole unit, these tended to have little chrome Telecaster pickups. That said, the UK market during the 70s copy era was a bit more conservative than the States - US brands such as Univox, Sigma & Ampeg produced some fairly bizarre hybrid takes on popular designs in the early 70s. I'm inclined to think the OP's bass was something like that, but since pics seem to be a problem, I guess we may never know... I should think so too! 😎

Some very pleasing designs, and I think that's rather the point with these. With the torpedo design, it's a pity the protruding ball-ends are visible - IMO they spoil the aesthetic. You'd think it would be simple enough to have them sit inside a recess at the end of the unit to conceal them.

I've had a whole bunch of Sunn Mustang Strats but not managed to pick up a bass yet. Interesting yours doesn't have the 'FMIC' under the logo, but these were Fender products - apparently the Sunn Mustang brand was UK/EU specific, & they were sold elsewhere badged as 'Squier II'. My Strats were all very decent & played well beyond the car-boot price points I paid - let down a bit by hardware/electronics, but bodies, necks & fretwork were excellent. These do appear to be the same as the early India-made Encores, however there are later Sunns which lack the correct Fender headstock & Sunn Amps logo. Not been hands-on with one but apparently not as good.

That's what a P should look like. Needs cream pickup covers though. 😎

Keep the 'Ray & the MIJ Jazz, and sell the Limelight & the '73. If your kids do grow up sufficiently wrong to want to be bass players, the last thing you'd want to do is let them loose on an original, good-condition 1973 Fender that is worth a stack of cash. Sell that to someone who will appreciate it for what it is and look after it, & if they do go mad, buy your kids a £100 Harley Benton that will play & sound about 97% as good as the Fender.

The Kubicki bridge always struck me as enormously over-complex & over-engineered compared to other headless bridge/tuner designs. Not sure anyone actually improved on the simplicity & elegance of Steinberger's original - which is, I suppose, why most other headless bridge designs imitate it.

The issue is that you are making very specific & pretty bold claims about the qualities of your design. If you want these qualities to be genuine reasons why musicians would purchase your premium-priced product, then you will have to produce some evidence to substantiate these claims. Otherwise you're expecting people just to take your word for it. As it happens, I quite like the aesthetic of the design and the method of adjusting string height is novel. I'm wondering how something similar could be implemented in a design that did not involve threading the string through the saddle. I'm someone else who appreciates a bridge design which allows quick string removal. As a matter of interest, the concept of strings passing through a saddle in order to (apparently) improve sustain & resonance is not a new one. DiMarzio, Kahler & Mighty Mite produced bridges like this in the late 70s/early 80s, although otherwise the designs were not too different to the typical Fender BBOT type.

A BC thread experiencing topic-drift? Shirley not! Afraid I can't help - my speculation above is the best reason I can come up with!

A 60s Japanese gold foil pickup, highly sought-after by proponents of lo-fi music who consider its inherent tendency for shrill, tinny audio, plus buzzing and microphonic squealing to be 'authentic' and somehow desirable qualities in a musical instrument: 70s Korean pickups based on a similar design and possessing similar 'musical' properties, presumably hailing from a culture where it was easier to source infill material from contemporary vehicle upholstery than from discarded fag packets. I hope this helps. Seriously, I do.

When I had mine I did briefly toy with the idea of buying a pack of 20 Benson & nicking the foil to replace the fake leather - obviously the fags would go straight in the bin. Hardly worth twice what I'd paid for the guitar though!

Sites like Fetishguitars & Cheesyguitars (which deals with mostly Eastern European stuff) are rabbit holes where you can lose any semblance of sanity, should you choose to enter. Or maybe 'wormholes' would be more apt, as it's a whole different dimension down there...

Dug around a bit & while I can't find a good pic, it seems some versions of this have a single saddle (basically a bit of bent plate) with overall intonation adjusted by a pair of screws which moves the whole thing - I'd guess that's what this has. Other versions, which I'd assume are later, have Tele bass type 2-saddle bridges with a different cover. String spacing's clearly an issue - could you use a vintage type BBOT with threaded saddles, that might allow a bit of control over spacing. Also I keep seeing these things on Ebay - obviously intended for hipster cigar-box junk, but if the spacing's really tight, it might work. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/224839471203

Yeah but no but. I don't really know much about 60s stuff, and even less about Italian 60s stuff. However I'm quite good at Google, and have a few relevant bookmarks so I can now tell you this is a rebadged Welson. Scroll to the bottom of this page & there are a bunch of variants of this bass, with a bunch of different brands. None are exactly the same but you could easily knock up a Dynacord Texas out of the bits: https://www.fetishguitars.com/welson/welson-vedette-and-the-like/

Lack of gold foil (bits of black fake leather instead) suggests not!

I had that minus the frets. Also that, only in metallic blue. I've sold a lot of basses I didn't miss in the slightest. Not those two, though.

SRs have been around since the late 80s, if I remember, all the early ones had standard sized P/J pickups. They are active though, so won't sound like a passive P/J without bypassing the active circuitry.

It's interesting - Thunder 1As are still very common basses, there are always plenty in circulation and it's always seemed that tends to keep prices down compared with other, less common comparable 80s MIJ basses. Ebay tends to be a good barometer, and having had a quick look, it still is. Sold item prices go from £135 at the bottom end up to £380 - those are very much outliers and the median's about £200 or so. 10-15 years ago the average ballpark was about £150 so they're not exactly appreciating fast. There are always sellers with ambitious pricing, and occasionally someone will bite - I'd say £295 for a 1A is very much the lucky side of average. The guitars tend to go for a bit more, interestingly,the average seeming to be getting near the £300 mark. This is galling, considering my own very nice Thunder 1 only fetched £150 when I flipped it. Was a great guitar & I probably should have hung on to it. Having said that, it cost me £6 from the local car boot, so I can't moan too much.

That better be true - I just had the most chronologically depressing birthday of my life a couple of weeks ago! Got a PS5 though, so it's not all bad!

As far as I know all the SB basses were built at Matsumoku, up until the factory closed in 1987. There is room for speculation, though - there's a myth that Aria & Aria Pro II were Matsumoku-exclusive brands, but during the 70s 'copy era' there are numerous examples of instruments built by Kasuga Gakki and Fujigen Gakki, and it's quite likely other factories were used too. However with the advent of Aria's original designs, there's no evidence suggesting high-end models like the Elites & SB-Rs were built anywhere else. Given that they were built to very specific designs it would probably hard to tell - it's also a myth that Matsumoku was inherently a higher-quality manufacturer than its competitors. It's possible you're thinking of the post-Matsumoku SB basses, such as the SB-ELT model which appeared in 1988/9. It's basically an Elite II/SB-R80 with some minor differences in electronics & dimensions, and it's not clear where these were made, or even if they're Japanese - they bear no serial numbers or production details. The quality is very, very high though, I have one of these and also a 1983 SB Elite I Black & Gold - they are on a par build-wise, and I'd say some of the detailing such as the fretboard inlays is tidier on the later SB-ELT. With these the general consensus is that they're Japanese, and it's been suggested that Tokai Gakki undertook top-end Aria manufacture after Matsumoku closed, although I can't find any solid evidence to support that. By the time these were being made, Korean factories like Cort, Samick & Young-Chang were perfectly capable of manufacturing to as high a standard as the Japanese builders, so it's possible they're MIK.

The SB Elite I is a Matsumoku bass, as is the Elite II and the very similar SB-R60 and SB-R80 models.

Was actually pretty cool - it's clear acrylic with the design printed/painted on the back. Probably the best thing about it, to be fair.